All groups have a dedicated mailing list (the Siena LUG provides us with a small server with a mailman instance that handles the http://liste.ubuntu-it.org domain to provide local mailing lists), or an email address (an alias) to be contacted. We don't have a team that administer all our mailing lists, the administration is left to the members of that particular group based on their needs.

The Italian LoCo Council is responsible for the creation of the dedicated mailing lists.

Other groups may grow up spontaneously within the community. Every group is free to organize itself as it wishes, defining roles and internal rules, always provided that it maintains the spirit of remaining open to new collaborators so that the potential of the group can be increased.

The Council

The Council has the aim of coordinating the various working groups described above, to integrate their work.

Constitution

The Council is made of people from different groups.

However, it may also contains members of the community that, although not members of the above groups, have done active and constructive work in the community which has mirrored the spirit of Ubuntu and for this reason are considered useful for a better functioning of the Council itself.

The Council should be composed of a number of persons which guarantees that the decisions taken can be "democratic", but not so large that the functioning of the team becomes too complex, so it was decided that the team should have a limit of maximum 10 people.

In the structure of the Ubuntu community, there is normally a LoCoTeamLeader and/or a LoCoTeamContact. The leader is not an obligatory figure and the Italian community does not have one as of now. We believe that while the teams and the Council function properly, the leader figure will not be necessary. A contact however is necessary to maintain communication and relations between the Italian Community and the Community Council and other national communities.

To operate, naturally, the Council needs to be able to talk together, this will happen via a private mailing list; occasionally, IRC meetings are held. Given the role of the Council (coordinate the efforts of the groups to increase their effectiveness and thus the services offered to the community), it is fundamental that communication is open to all, i.e. all members of the community can participate and comment at the IRC meetings to express their own ideas and suggestions.

Function and Role

The Council needs to interact with the community and the groups in a way which inspires dialogue, communication, understanding and respect for individuality.

It is of fundamental importance that the Council is not seen as a symbol of "power" over the workings of the community, but rather one of "service" for the community, and as a group of volunteers who aim at optimizing and coordinating the human resources of the community.

Certain aims of the Council have been identified:

establishing guidelines (objectives and methodology) for the various projects and the working groups within the community.

ensure that projects are independent of the persons working on them, so that projects are managed in a way that permits them to evolve notwithstanding changes in the personnel who create or work on them.

permitting the groups to work with sufficient autonomy in respect of the guidelines of the community

keeping track of the various activities within the community and the working groups in order to avoid duplicate work, overlaps and wastes of resources.

take care of relations between the Italian community and Canonical through the contact

coordinating the various activities, optimizing efforts.

working to resolve any difference in ideas or other problems that present themselves within the community, in the event that they occur between members of the community or within working groups

promoting activities which aim at the greater diffusion of Ubuntu

promoting the work of the Italian community to the other national communities and Canonical